


Hulk-sized Guilt

by Zorro_sci



Category: The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Angst, Guilt, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Miscarriage, Mpreg, Tony Stark POV
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-08-15
Updated: 2014-08-15
Packaged: 2018-02-13 05:57:45
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 1,859
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2139636
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Zorro_sci/pseuds/Zorro_sci
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Bruce finds himself unexpectedly expecting.  He's really excited by the news, but soon an appearance by the Hulk turns the miracle into a tragedy.  Bruce blames the Hulk, and as it turns out, Hulk blames himself too.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Unexpectedly expecting

**Author's Note:**

  * For [kweandee](https://archiveofourown.org/users/kweandee/gifts).



> In response to [this prompt](http://avengerkink.livejournal.com/19458.html?thread=46868226)

I'll never forget the day we found out Bruce was pregnant. It was one of the happiest, and weirdest, days of my life. The morning had started with Bruce throwing up, and ended with us staring incredulously at a blood test. 

Apparently the Hulk-suppressant that we had used the first six months after we started having sex, (before we discovered that we didn't need it), had a very unexpected side effect. It had not only temporarily blocked the Big Guy, it had also temporarily made Bruce able to get pregnant. Didn't see that coming.

Given the circumstances, it was hard to believe Bruce hadn't gotten pregnant earlier, but that's beside the point. The point was, we were going to have a baby. A baby that was ours. It was everything Bruce had ever wanted, and although I had thought I never wanted kids, I couldn't help but share his enthusiasm.

Bruce was having my baby. We were going to be fathers. It was the most amazing feeling in the world.

I couldn't stop smiling, and Bruce's eyes were shining with so much joy his whole face glowed. Then Bruce, being Bruce, started to worry. He worried that his irradiated blood would kill the baby, or that the baby would inherit his mutation. He worried that the baby would be born sick from the radiation. But most of all, he worried that if he hulked-out it would hurt the baby.

Having seen Bruce transform a few times, I couldn't help but to agree with him on the last one. The change was accompanied by the sound of bones breaking and muscles tearing as his small human body expanded into massive rage monster form. It was incredibly hard on his body, and I couldn't imagine that it would be good for a fetus.

I assured Bruce that we would keep him calm and safe, and it would be a non-issue. We'd tell the team, and they wouldn't make him go on missions. He wouldn't have any reason to hulk-out until after our child was born.

Bruce seemed nervous, but he agreed. We told the team, and they were very supportive. It seemed like our plan was going to work.


	2. Tragedy

In the sixth month of Bruce's pregnancy I came home to find him curled up in a blanket on the couch. He was balled up as small as he could possibly make himself, and he had been crying.

"What's wrong, Bruce?" I asked.

He turned toward me and stared at me with empty eyes. Their blankness filled me with dread, but I didn't know why until he spoke.

"Our baby is gone," he said brokenly.

"What?" I breathed in shock.

It couldn't be true. Just that morning we had been spooning in bed, one of my hands resting on Bruce's baby bump, as we planned what we were going to do with the nursery. Our baby couldn't be gone.

"Hulk came out," he said, his eyes filling with tears and his voice breaking. "The baby didn't survive the transformation."

Bruce started sobbing in earnest, and I quickly crossed the floor to wrap him in my arms. Tears filled my own eyes as he wept into my shoulder, but I didn't let them fall. I needed to stay strong for Bruce. As much as this hurt me, he was the one who had held a little life in his body, and he was the one who had felt that life slip away.

"He ruins everything. He takes everything I love away from me. I hate him, Tony," Bruce muttered into my shoulder.

"Bruce . . . I'm sure Hulk . . . " I started.

"No," he cut me off angrily. "He killed our baby. I never want to talk about him again."

When I opened my mouth to argue that maybe he was being too harsh, he glared at me with an icy intensity that froze me to my spot. There was something in his expression. Something cold and determined that scared me.

The source of that determination quickly made itself known when Bruce locked himself in the lab a few hours later. He refused to open the door or talk to me, but JARVIS said that he was trying to find a way to destroy the Hulk. He was unable to get anymore details though, because Bruce muted him every time he mentioned Hulk. 

The team tried to talk to Bruce, but he shut them all down. He refused to let any of them in, and when they broke in, he refused to talk to them. He just continued his experiments with a dogged single-minded focus.

I was worried that he was going to work himself into exhaustion, but there was nothing I could do. He was shutting me out, and all I could do was hope that he would come out of it eventually.


	3. Guilty Hulk

A couple days later we received a call to assemble. Giant slugs had been set loose in Central Park, and nothing the police or National Guard had tried seemed to be stopping them.

Bruce surprised us all by showing up at the rendezvous point. No one said as much though, because the look on his face clearly showed that he didn't want anyone to mention it.

Bruce transformed quickly, probably because he'd had so much anger and hurt boiling so close to the surface for so long, and the battle got under way.

The slugs were tough. Bullets didn't slow them down much, but they didn't fair so well against repulsors, exploding arrows or lightning; and they really didn't do so well against Hulk.

Hulk was able to smash the slugs easily, but as the battle continued I realized that he wasn't just smashing them. He was ripping them apart, his fury barely contained as he turned them into slug confetti, and he was only getting more violent with each slug he killed.

Following Cap's orders, I flew closer to investigate. We needed to make sure that Hulk wouldn't be a threat once the slugs were defeated. If he had lost control and couldn't contain his rage, then we would have a problem.

He was pounding the last slug into a pile of goo when I finally reached him, and when I did what I saw surprised me. His face wasn't twisted in rage or anger like it usually was, it was filled with desperation. In fact, he looked like he was trying not cry.

"What's happening, Big Guy?" I asked as I raised my visor.

"Hulk sorry," he boomed.

"What?"

"Hulk sorry. Hulk hurt baby," he said sadly, and then hung his head and said, "Hulk smash baby. Hulk didn't mean to. Hulk love baby. Hulk want protect baby; stay away for baby. But Banner hurt. Hulk couldn't stay away. Banner dying, and baby dying. Hulk tried to save. Hulk failed. Hulk sorry."

Hulk's confession hit me in the gut and brought tears to my eyes. He blamed himself. He was hurting just as much as Bruce or I were, because in a way it had been his baby too, and he had been blaming himself for what had happened. It was wrong. 

"It wasn't your fault, Big Guy," I tried to soothe.

"Not true. Hulk fault baby gone. Banner blame Hulk. Banner angry; hate Hulk. Want to kill Hulk, because Hulk killed baby. Tony hate Hulk too," Hulk mourned, giant tears forming in his eyes, and then being loosed as he broke into sobs.

"No," I countered brokenly, my tears freely flowing now as I gently wrapped my arms around the neck of the grief-stricken giant. "I don't hate you, Hulk. I love you."

"Tony no hate Hulk? But baby gone because of Hulk. Hulk bad," he said.

"You're not bad. You protected Bruce. He would have died without you. You didn't do anything wrong," I tried to reassure as he continued to weep. "Bad things just happen sometimes. It's not your fault our baby died. I don't blame you."

I hugged him a little tighter, and he pulled back to look at me. He looked broken, but under the layers of pain there was a barely visible spark of hope. He seemed to be wondering if forgiveness was possible.

"I love you, Hulk. And it was not your fault," I repeated to drive the point home.

He nodded sadly and responded, "Hulk love Tony too."

Then he started to shrink back into Bruce.

"Let's go home," Cap said sadly.

It was only then that I realized that the team had been watching the whole thing. They stood nearby, their shoulderd drooping and their eyes teary, clearly just as moved by what Hulk had said as I was.

Thor picked up Bruce, who was still unconscious, and Clint threw a comforting arm around my shoulder, and we trudged back to the Tower in somber silence.


	4. Understanding

Back at the Tower, I laid Bruce in our bed, and then cleaned myself up. When I had showered and changed, I slipped into bed next to him, watching his face as he slept.

Even unconscious he looked distraught, and I couldn't help but think of all the pain both he and Hulk had been through in the last several days. It was so unfair. Unfair that we had a strange miracle brought into our lives only to lose it. Unfair that Bruce had been hurt. Unfair that Hulk had carried so much guilt and blamed himself.

"Tony, what's wrong?" Bruce asked, interrupting my thoughts and making me realize that I was crying.

"There's something you need to see," I said as I wiped the tears off of my face.

JARVIS started the footage of Hulk's confession that had been recorded by the Iron Man helmet camera on a nearby screen, and Bruce stiffened as soon as he saw his greener self.

"I told you I never . . . " he started.

"Just watch a second," I cut him off.

He turned his attention back to the screen, and flinched as he watched Hulk admit his guilt. He shrunk in on himself and started crying, so I reached over and put my arm around him.

"I was selfish," he whispered when the screen went blank. "I was hurting so much I didn't want to see anyone else's point of view. It was easier to be angry at him then to think about what we lost. I should have known he was trying to protect me. I shouldn't have blamed him."

"He's hurting too. I'm sure he understands," I tried to comfort him.

"I wish I could tell him I'm sorry," he said mournfully.

"I think he knows," I said, wrapping him into a full hug, and pulling him to my chest.

He hid his face in my shirt and cried while I ran my hands up and down his back to try to comfort him. The whole scene seemed really familiar. I had been doing the same for Hulk not an hour earlier, (though the Big Guy was much harder to hold onto), but Bruce and Hulk were mourning, and I would be their shoulder to cry on as long as they needed. We would face our loss together.


End file.
